Cex
Starship Galactica
[555]
Rating: 8.3
19-year-old Ryan Kidwell suffers from a textbook Jekyll-and-Hyde complex. By
day, mild-mannered Mr Kidwell leads a typical adolescent lifestyle, attending
college classes, interacting with his peers, and exhibiting a healthy level of
comfort with members of the opposite sex. Ryan earns good grades, gets along
with his parents and enjoys making music. Weird music. Enter the alter-ego,
Cex.
Cex is a trash-talking IDM superstar who does funny dances. Cex is the
self-proclaimed Number One Electronic Musician in the world. Cex removes his
clothes on stage. Cex once remixed the Dismemberment Plan. Cex writes battle
raps for the haters that criticize his style. Cex posts MP3s of these raps on
his website. Cex co-runs his own label, Tigerbeat6. Cex flames other labels
on their own bulletin boards. Cex once appeared in an Urb magazine
article profiling America's best new electronic artists. Cex takes every
available opportunity to remind others of his appearance in Urb
magazine. Cex has been quoted as saying, "Snoop Dogg has his shit together.
I think he and I would get along really well if we hung out at the MTV Beach
House." Cex is pronounced "sex." And the list goes on.
It's a strange duality, indeed. At times, Kidwell comes off as a
quintessential bedroom composer-- the alienated, frail-looking but lovable
nerd we see pictured against a backdrop of flames on the cover of his latest
EP, Starship Galactica. Cex's early records took on a similar
personality: reserved, cerebral and typically inaccessible.
These days it's different. Catch him at one of his live shows, in which he
scarcely plays any of his released material, and he's a raving savage. He
spends most of his airtime at the mic, either freestyling to the crowd, or
decrying the pretenses of the IDM scene. Cex accuses other musicians of
cloaking their music in a false sense of mysticism-- building up a cult of
personality by shutting themselves off from their fans, keeping their
interviews terse and periodically issuing press photos of themselves in
cryptic chin-stroking postures.
On a mission to subvert the scene that spawned him, Cex lays himself bare on
his website, recording his thoughts in a daily journal that he keeps on public
display. This diary has grown into a 12-month catalog of Cex's preposterous
bragging and Ryan's self-aware, insecure rants; it often feels as if the two
are fighting for control of the same body. It's juvenile, humorous, endearing
and admirable all at once. It also leads me to conclude that Cex has
established a unique persona of his own. He's a geeky teenager with an ear
for music and an identity crisis; he's been thrust into the spotlight and
doesn't quite know how to cope.
A departure from his previous studio efforts, the latest Cex release sees
Kidwell reconciling some of the disparities between his various selves.
Starship Galactica presents us with his most accessible yet accomplished
output to date, interspersed with amateurish comedy skits that take cues from
Big Pun and Outkast.
The musical offerings on this platter run the stylistic gamut, from the
squelchy electro of "Cal and Brady Style," to the organic and acoustic
Kraut-rock leanings of "Get in Yr Squads." The pieces never stray too far
from their influences; and though no individual song pushes the envelope,
it's uncommon to find such a motley array of mastered styles on the same
album.
Starship Galactica matches the instant, flamboyant appeal of Cex's
live show with the quirkiness and complexity of his early releases. The
charm of his new material reaches beyond novelty, and the sublime innocence
of songs like "Your Handwriting When You Were a Child in the Winter" profits
from each successive listen.
"Tattoo of a Barcode" and "Cex Can Kiss My Soft Sensuous Lips" (the name is a
play on the infamously titled Kid606 song "Luke Vibert Can Kiss My Indiepunk
Whiteboy Ass") hearken back to the Cex sound of old, breaking from the
conventional pop logic that the rest of the record follows. Both are
brilliant, and their presence on this release indicates that Kidwell might
think twice before he abandons his upbringing as an avant-garde laptop jockey.
Cex maintains that he's an entertainer, not an artist. But the rounded feel
of Starship Galactica suggests that, against all his protestations,
he's thankfully still a bit of both.
-Malcolm Seymour III